The store is a bit cavelike at the moment. Most of the lights are out so that the ceiling can be painted, and all of the windows are covered. The ceiling painting is completed, and all of the walls are framed. It was a good week of progress!

The windows are covered, and the for rent sign is gone. In a week or two, we’ll get some signage letting everyone know that Terra Outfitters will be open soon! We’ll also have a sign that hangs perpendicular to the sidewalk, and will get some nice benches or chairs in front of the store. The sidewalk is really deep, and about half of it is covered by the roof overhang.

It’s tough to see the color without much light, but it’s dark green, basically camo green.

There’s green dust on everything from the painting. It looks pretty rough, but I assure you that this is actually forward progress. Once there’s light, and floors, things will look much less depressing.  

We’re stuck with the door to the left of the front windows since it goes to the utility closet, and we’re not going to move everything that’s in there. We’re planning to either make the door a giant chalkboard, or just replace it with a barnwood door that will blend in.

Downtown was quieter than we’d ever seen it due to the weather. Things were gradually opening up by the time we left, but it was going to be a slow day there. As proof of how cold it’s been, there was still ice sculptures all around downtown that were left over from the fire and ice festival last weekend. Ice normally doesn’t last 8 days here!

Buildings look a lot less happy when there’s no sun. Once we have our signs, chairs, and awesome window displays, it will look a lot better.

On most days, it’s tough to get a parking spot, but with a little bit of snow, Blue Ridge looks like a ghost town.

Directly across the street from the store, the city park has a big pavilion with a fireplace. All of the big events (Arts in the Park, tree lighting, etc) are in this park, so we’ll routinely have huge crowds to pull from.

Our block-neighbors include a women’s boutique, a pet boutique, a bead store, the pharmacy and general store, and building under renovation. The corner is occupied by a former gas station that’s now an electric bike store. “Bike Parking Only” is always a good sign. Our store is a few doors down from this picture.

 

 

Construction inside of the space began on Monday, and they’ve already made good progress. We are not doing anything major to the space, just making some cosmetic upgrades and moving partition walls. The main items are:

• new floors (wood)
• paint the ceiling earthy green
• new track lights, kill the current lights
• remove an existing partition wall in the back room
• add two 6’x6′ fitting rooms
• paint everything

There will also be some barnwood added to the walls, wood trim all around, and of course, all of the fixturing.

On Monday, they removed the wall in the back room and built the walls for the first fitting room.

This is where the wall used to be.

This is the new wall. The door and window on the red wall are being filled in and that will be a solid wall. The opening on the right will be the entrance to the backroom. You can also see some masking tape on the floor from when we taped off the walls and fixturing plan to make sure we had it nailed down before the sawzall came out.

Immediately inside of the backroom is a short section of “hallway” that is 6′ wide before it opens up to the main storage area. This is looking forward into the store. Obviously, those walls will all be solid!

A day later, the same view shows the carpet completely removed!

The fitting room doors will be made out of barnwood, and the entrance to the back will be left open. We’ll continue the wood floor through the first part of the back hallway so that it’s visually ok. For now, the rest of the back room will remain concrete, although I think we’ll be investing in some carpet squares for a corner of it since that will also be my office!

Now the back is one giant empty room. In 10 weeks, this will be filled with shelves and shoes! The open doorway goes to the “back back”, which has a couple of closets, a small hallway/room, an exit door, and a restroom. We’re not going to do any work back there, and the space will likely just be used to stack boxes before they’re received.

 

The second fitting room was also framed on Tuesday. Both of them are 6’x6′, so all but the tallest people can spread their arms completely out, airplane style, and not touch a wall. We want our fitting rooms to be super comfortable and inviting so that people want to keep trying on clothes!

 

The picture below is looking towards the back of the store and was taken 15-20 feet from the front window. The front doors are to the left behind the camera. There’s a long way to go, but this is huge progress in two days!